Song #028: The Paperbacks - Slow Learners (off Lit From Within - 2010)
So far, Lit From Within by Winnipeg dudes The Paperbacks is my favourite double album of 2010. It’s not that there’s a lot of competition, but I still think that stands for something.
Songs like Slow Learners are definitely why I think so fondly of this album. For a bunch of guys who were once a pretty cool pop-punk band, this song is pretty light, standard indie rock. Acoustic guitars! Plaintiveness! Similes! Remarks about her thick-rimmed glasses! What’s not to love?!? </bias>
This is a song, predictably, about learning things the hard way. For all the logic and planning you do when you’re young and stupid, you don’t ever know what you’re getting into. Life and your emotions are unpredictable. This song is one huge metaphor for not learning from other peoples’ mistakes.
It wasn’t as though either of them had wronged the other; far from it. She’d been through much worse, and he’d been guilty of much more negligent behaviour. They thought this would be different - uncomplicated. For a while, it was. She felt liberated, as if this kind of love shouldn’t be this easy this quickly. Who finds something so comfortable when they’re a stupid kid?
She’d been warned about this complacency, and realized aghast that they’d become their own terrible warning. Nothing was accomplished. They stopped putting in the effort and fell into the laziest routine. They drifted apart, not only from each other, but from their aspirations and goals. Stagnation overran every aspect of her life, and it was absolutely intolerable. She needed change, and her black-and-white emotions told her there was just one thing to do…
